


i need a tall glass of something

by amosanguis



Series: author's fave [107]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Humor, M/M, Mild Blood, Podfic Available, Timeline What Timeline, Title from a Country Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 01:32:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15939008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: Ryan bites him. Maybe a little too hard. Maybe not hard enough. There’s definitely blood, but whatever – Shane’s finger is still attached and Ryan’s still a fucking parrot. They’re both losers here.





	i need a tall glass of something

**Author's Note:**

> \--Title from "Tall Glass of Something" by Jake Owen.  
> \--Nothing here is to be taken seriously.  
> \--Inspired by [this tweet](https://twitter.com/griffinblade/status/1033873158628147200?s=09).  
> \--This has only been given a cursory edit, please forgive any mistakes.  
> \--[Podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16498820).

-z-

 

If Ryan gets out of this, he’s never coming back to New Orleans.

 _Never_.

Possibly because if he has sit here and listen to Shane argue with the airline staff about the importance of emotional support animals on a plane for another hour he’s going to die. Just straight up give up his ghost. And, oh god, if he dies like this will his ghost be human or—

Ryan forces himself to quash the thought with a shake of his head.

 

-

 

Ryan will never forgive Shane.

“I’ll see you in a few hours, okay, buddy?” Shane says–

—well, _tries_ to say, because Ryan is squawking and flapping his brand fucking new wings and his bright green feathers are standing straight up and— _no_ , just. Fuck. No. He’s not getting into the—

“I’m so fucking sorry, Ryan,” and Shane is still _fucking_ talking even as the door to the carrier is being opened and—

Ryan _screeches_ because this is _fucking bullshit_.

“C’mon, dude,” and Shane is _begging_ him now, “you can use the air time to get some rest. How’s that sound?”

Ryan bites him. Maybe a little too hard. Maybe not hard enough. There’s definitely blood, but whatever – Shane’s finger is still attached and Ryan’s still a _fucking_ _parrot_. They’re both losers here.

 

-

 

Five long hours later and Ryan has decided that he’s going to murder everyone on the flight who owns a dog – he memorizes their faces, matching them with the addresses on the tags. He screams at all of them.

When, finally, Shane and TJ and Devon come around the corner, he screams at them, too – not feeling even slightly guilty at the way nearly all of Shane’s fingers have been bandaged. He isn’t even swayed when Shane collapses in front of the carrier – relief written all over his stupid face.

Nope, no guilt, no remorse here.

None.

Ryan obviously goes home with Shane and if he’s just a bit quieter as Shane carefully buckles the carrier into the backseat, well, it’s just because he’s tired.

 

-

 

They stop at a pet store just long enough for Shane to grab a bed, a perch, a bag of bird food, and a few sympathetic glances. One lady tries to stick her finger in the carrier to pet Ryan and Shane barely has time to jerk the carrier away, making Ryan’s beak snap closed on nothing but air.

“He’s, uh,” Shane stutters, trying to fight his way through exhaustion and maybe a bit of blood loss. “I just adopted him,” he finally says, clutching the carrier to his chest, making only the smallest noise as Ryan begins chewing at his arm, “he’s, uh, he’s from a rough home.”

“Oh,” the lady says, watching worriedly as Shane begins to bleed through his shirt. “Well, I work with abused birds, maybe I can—”

Ryan cuts her off with the shrillest shriek he can manage, trying to flap his wings in the confined space of the animal carrier.

“Thanks, but I gotta—,” Shane interrupts as Ryan shrieks again, “—I gotta go.”

 

-

 

Despite himself, Ryan feels a sense of calmness wash over him once they’re in Shane’s apartment.

Shane sets the perch on the coffee table and the small cat bed on the side of the couch Ryan’s always preferred. Then he grabs two shallow dishes and fills one with water and the other with food.

“Are you going to divebomb me or anything?” Shane asks, his hand hesitating on the door to Ryan’s carrier.

Ryan makes a low noise in the back of his throat – aside from squawks and shrieks and screams, Ryan was still figuring out parrot vocal cords and how to manipulate them. What he wanted to say was: _The fuck you think? Of course I am._ Instead, what comes out is a low vocalization, not unlike static from the spirit box.

Shane, the idiot, doesn’t seem to interpret it the way Ryan wants him to, and opens the door.

Ryan jumps out and he’s opening his beak and spreading his wings to really lay into Shane—

 —but then the fight seems to just _drain_ out of him.

He’s tired. He’s hungry. He wants his own bed and he wants a burger and he wants to—

Ryan lets his wings droop and feels himself huff a sigh, before walking as carefully as he can over to the edge of the coffee table and, with a few flaps of his wings, settles into what looks like will be his new bed for the foreseeable future.

 

-

 

Before he goes to bed, Shane looks Ryan in the eye, swears, “I’m going to figure this out, Ry. I am.”

Ryan just makes that low noise in his throat again and turns away, trying to fold into himself as much as he can.

 

-

 

By the time Shane wakes up and makes it out into the living room, Ryan has perfected exactly three words and he demonstrates them proudly as a greeting.

“Fuck you, Shane,” Ryan says, puffing up his feathers as much as he can.

He’s not sure what exactly he was expecting in response – maybe a “fuck you, too, Ryan” or something – but instead all he gets is Shane looking at him, not even cracking a smile.

“Yeah,” he says. “Fuck me.”

Which is bullshit, because Shane shouldn’t be the sad one here.

He doesn’t even have a fucking beak.

 

-

 

He doesn’t know why either of them think it’s a good idea to brink Ryan into work on the absolute off-chance that _someone_ might know something about random ass bird transformations.

Ryan stays perched on Shane’s shoulder, occasionally biting Shane’s ear just to listen to Shane swallow a yelp of pain and also maybe to watch the blood ruin Shane’s too white button-up.

The first people they run into is, of course, Steven and Andrew, in the middle of filming an intro to the next episode of _Worth It_.

Ryan tries to beat his wings and steer Shane away – he’s never going to live this down with Steven if Steven sees him like this – but Shane just reaches up and grabs Ryan with both of his stupidly big hands that easily wrap around Ryan’s parrot body.

Ryan bites him and snaps, “Fuck you, Shane.”

Shane winces but he’s already closed the distance and Steven and Andrew are looking at him with extreme concern.

“Uh, we’re in the middle of something,” Steven says. “We can help you with whatever video you’re shooting this afternoon? Maybe tomorrow?”

“What? No,” Shane says, shaking his head even as he holds Ryan up so Steven and Andrew could see him better. “This is very much _not_ for a video. Look, this is going to sound fucking _insane_ , okay, but I really need some help—”

Ryan can’t help himself. “Fuck you, Shane,” he says.

Steven’s eyes lock in on him immediately. “Is that—?”

“It is,” Shane says, nodding.

Andrew lifts his eyebrows, “Dude, you are absolutely _covered_ in blood.”

 _Better blood than feathers_ , Ryan thinks to himself even as he narrows his eyes at Steven. Steven’s got this disappointed look on his face as he puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head.

“Ryan, man, c’mon,” he says.

“Fuck you,” Ryan says, dragging out the _youuuuuu_ and ruffling his feathers again.

Steven shares a look with Andrew, who turns back to Shane. “Ask Curly. He might know something.”

 

-

 

Curly knows a lot of things, it turns out. Like where exactly it is he should be scratching Ryan even as he coos out stupid nonsense Ryan doesn’t think he’d tolerate from anyone else.

Almost anyone else.

Shane doesn’t count.

“Go talk to Zach,” Curly finally recommends as he gives Ryan one last scratch. “I’m almost positive this happened to Eugene once.”

“Really?” Shane asks, perking up. “Why didn’t we hear about it?”

Curly smirks and lowers his voice. “Because Eugene didn’t turn into a bird – I don’t know what it was, but it was something embarrassing, I hear.”

Ryan wants to roll his eyes. Eugene could turn into a rat and he’d still be the most attractive person at Buzzfeed.

“Do you know how he got changed back?” Shane asks.

Curly shakes his head and Shane’s expression goes dark as he puts his head in his hands.

Ryan sighs and hops away from Curly, gingerly walking up to Shane and saying, “Fuck you, Shane,” in a way he hopes comes across more like _cheer up, big guy_.

When Shane peeks between his fingers, he gives Ryan an assessing look and, seeming to find what he was looking for, cracks a small smile.

 

-

 

The only news Zach has for them is that Eugene did in fact get changed into a [redacted] and that it had been caused by stress. He’d then given Ryan and Shane _a Look_ that neither of them were immediately able to discern, before quietly turning and leaving them to their thoughts.

 

-

 

Their thoughts last a week with Ryan and Shane exactly no closer to figuring out who caused this or what – all while falling increasingly behind at work. Shane tries to pick up as much of the slack as he can – editing footage for the next episode of _Ruining History_ and, once, trying his hand at _Unsolved_ – just to have Ryan _scream_ at him for his audacity.

It was enough to drive a parrot to drink.

If only his body could metabolize the amount of alcohol he was longing for. Instead, Ryan had had to get accustomed to fucking parrot food and an assortment of parrot-safe veggies (all of which tastes _delightful_ to his new taste buds) that Shane very methodically researches and picks out.

 _It was enough to drive a parrot to drink_.

 

-

 

The world is stupidly big from Ryan’s new point-of-view. Yeah, the wings, after he’s gotten used to them, are pretty gnarly and useful for when he feels like divebombing Shane from the top of the refrigerator or whenever the hop from the perch on the coffee table to the couch just seems like Too Much Effort. The colors are different, too – but not really in ways that he’s got the vocabulary to explain. They’re just—they’re _more_ , somehow – as if the saturation’s been turned all the way up.

Shane himself is bigger than he’s ever been and that itself makes Ryan snap his beak in frustration, makes his feathers stand on end. Which, of course, Shane notices – because he’s been ridiculously attentive to Ryan’s body language, reading whatever he’s got on pulled up on his phone about parrot behavior, as if Ryan’s an actual fucking parrot – anyway – Shane _notices_. And he says to Ryan—

“You okay, man? Can I get you anything?”

And Ryan feels his cheek feathers moving and fluffing up and he hates the way his body is betraying him like this. So, because he can, he says, “Fuck you, Shane.” And right about the third time this happens, Shane’s face is no longer falling – instead he’s giving Ryan just this quiet little smile.

“Yeah,” is all he says before he turns back to the television, “fuck me.”

 

-

 

The cat bed isn’t uncomfortable, exactly, it’s just that, well, Shane’s bed is better.

Shane hadn’t even bothered to protest when he saw Ryan walking into the room as he himself changed and Ryan, with a quick flap of his wings, got up onto the bed.

Ryan wasted no time – just settling himself in against a pillow before tucking his head under a wing. He doesn’t even look up as the bed dips and Shane crawls in, pulling the covers up and over the both of them and, carefully, tucking the blankets around Ryan. And Ryan, despite himself, makes another noise high in the back of his throat as Shane shifts the bedding around him.

“I’m gonna get us through this,” Shane says, his voice soft as the pad of his thumb brushes briefly over the feathered crown of Ryan’s head.

Ryan pretends he doesn’t lean into the touch.

In the morning, Ryan is curled against Shane’s chest, his head being moved in the slow up-and-down motion in tandem with Shane’s breathing. It was a moment that, if he wasn’t so feathered, would have been so perfect. But he is, so it isn’t.

He’s just about to try extricating himself when Shane’s arm comes up and tightens around Ryan. Ryan is just about to go with his initial instinct to bite Shane – _hard_ – but then the arm is loosening, and a rumbling laugh is coming up through Shane’s chest, shaking the bed and Ryan and maybe Ryan’s resolve, too.

“C’mon,” Shane is saying, “let’s see what we can scrounge up for breakfast.”

Ryan, just so he doesn’t lose face, nips at Shane’s forearm. And, because he cares, he doesn’t even break the skin. Shane laughs and before Ryan can really gather his wits around him, Shane is pressing a casual kiss to the back of Ryan’s head and crawling out of bed in one smooth motion.

Ryan feels his cheek feathers begin fluffing up and his, “Fuck you, Shane,” doesn’t have near as much as heat as he’d like.

 

-

 

Yet another week passes and Ryan’s still a bird and he’s given up all hope. He spends his days perched on Shane’s shoulder at work – muttering as many vague encouragements through different inflections of “Fuck you, Shane” as he thinks he can get away with – while his nights are spent “accidentally” snuggled up to Shane’s chest, just reveling in the feeling of Shane’s chest slowly going up and down, up and down, up and down.

It’s during one of these nights that Ryan thinks, _I can get used to this_ , just as he’s drifting off to sleep.

 

-

 

The first thing Ryan notices is that sensation of soft sheets against his bare skin.

Then his eyes are flying open, because—

 _Soft sheets against his bare skin_.

“Holy shit,” he says, darting straight up and realizing so many things at once – the world’s colors were back to normal saturation, everything in Shane’s room was the proper size, Shane was looking up him with wide and astonished eyes and Shane’s arm was around his waist, and, _god_ , Ryan was _starving_.

Oh, wait. Shit—

Shane. Shane’s arm was around Ryan’s waist. Shane’s arm was around Ryan’s _naked_ waist.

Ryan yelps and goes to leap away but suddenly Shane is tightening his hold on Ryan and pulling him down and intertwining their legs together and shifting his body so that he’s kinda half on top of Ryan. “It’s Saturday,” he grumbles, his voice deep and faux-sleepy, “we’re not getting up this early.”

And Ryan wants to protest – he absolutely _wants_ to get up this early. He wants to run around on his two legs and wave his non-feathered arms around. But. But this—

Shane wrapped around him – Shane who’s been with him through this whole thing even as Ryan savaged him with beak and tongue, who’s looking at him now as if he’s terrified Ryan’s going to actually run. So, Ryan does what makes sense in the moment.

Ryan sighs, gives Shane a little half-smile, and says, “Fuck you, Shane,” with as much adoration as he can muster.

Shane, his face half-obscured by the pillow, smiles back and says, “Yeah. Fuck me.”

 

-z-

 

End.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] i need a tall glass of something](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16498820) by [frecklebombfic (frecklebomb)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frecklebomb/pseuds/frecklebombfic), [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery), [idellaphod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idellaphod/pseuds/idellaphod), [KD reads (KDHeart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDHeart/pseuds/KD%20reads), [thriceandonce (sylvaine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylvaine/pseuds/thriceandonce), [Vidriana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vidriana/pseuds/Vidriana)




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